Intuitive & Easy to use
AMAZON Member Review 9th January 2009
By Kp Fraser

I bought a copy of this software to put together some plans for an outbuilding I want to convert. I found the software excellent value for money and miles ahead of similar software on the market. Many available products are based on US software and contain house features and finishes that would not be seen on European properties, also many are based around imperial measurements and don't convert well to the metric system. In contrast Grand Designs 3D is clearly designed for the European housing market and European measurements. In about three hours I managed to knock together a plan for the outbuildings I want to convert without much difficulty, having not used the software before. I thought the software was pretty easy to use as long as the user takes the time to look at some of the plans and tutorials contained in the software. There is also a pretty good help system and the manual seemed to cover everything I needed. I am reasonably computer literate but certainly no expert, but I found this software pretty easy to use and very flexible, it looks like almost any window, door, bath, kitchen unit etc can be resized to the exact size you want. It was great being able to keep changing features until you get what you want. The cost of the software is miniscule compared to the projected cost of building an extension or refurbishing a kitchen and I'd thoroughly recommend the software to anyone who wants to try and visualise a project before they phone a builder or architect.

Useful product
AMAZON Member Review 6th January 2009
By O.B.Douglas - Thames Valley, UK

Looking at the other reviews, opinions on this are clearly divided. It's not especially cheap, but I feel it's actually an ok product. The single machine licence is a nuisance, but I found it easy to use and very comprehensive, as long as you are clear about what you want and know how to go about it. It's not for doodling, it is intended for serious re-modelling and renovation. Sure, the professionals have much better products and are expert with them , so if you just want to pay someone to do the work for you, there is little point in buying it. If you want to do all or some of it yourself, I think it is very useful and not hard to learn. Recommended.

I loaded this onto my PC upstairs, and then decided it might be easier to have it on my laptop - but it wouldn't let me. It has a single licence, so once it's been loaded up, that's it.

The program has a familiar interface: it looks very Windows-like with tool bars and drop down menus. The icons, however, are very small: for example, there are a lot of different doors and windows to choose from but they are hard to see from the icons and I ended up with random choices because I was fed up with peering and squinting!

You can choose to create your own home plan from scratch, which is easy enough using click and drag. You choose a type of wall, click on it and drag it into place, then stretch it to the desired length and click to fix. Then you add more walls, further floors etc. until you have created a 2D plan of your home.
I created a plan of my home as it currently is, and then copied it intending to use the 2nd plan to design the changes I wanted (I'm putting in a 2nd bathroom upstairs and changing doorways downstairs). This is when I ran into some problems: some walls refused to be moved or changed and odd shapes began to appear in the walls I currently had...

But neverthless, using the little manual supplied (there is also comprehensive online help), I was able to make a good plan of my home and design the changes - and relatively quickly. It was very satisfying and I could quickly see what was going to work (in real life) and what wouldn't.

The 'Grand Designs' element was a bit lost on me, other than it was interesting to see other homes and designs. I guess it could offer inspiration, but I was clear about what I wanted.

There are good number of useful designs to choose from if you don't want to design your own from scratch, and obviously these can offer inspiration and ideas if you need help.

I especially liked the little 3D plan that you can have displayed as you work on a 2D plan. It helps to get a clear idea of the final house/renovation/ and stopped me making a number of mistakes!

Overall, I would recommend this to anyone who is serious about designing their own renovation. It's not something that you'll want to use if you're just playing around with ideas - it's time consuming and relatively complicated, as you would expect. For playing with ideas you'd do better with pencil and graph paper, and turn to this when you're ready for some serious designing.

If you want to produce professional looking scaled plans that will actually work and that you can give to a builder to work from, or use for a planning application - then this is the best programme I've personally ever tried (and believe me, I've tried a few that were RUBBISH!)

This one is pretty good.

Sometimes you just get products "endorsed" by others etc. and this is fully what I was expecting with this product, just a normal CAD program re-branded.

In fact the brand link up works fantastically and one of the key highlights of the program is ready made templates of different properties that have been featured on the Grand Designs TV Shows.

Obviously this is a bit of a low end solution compared to others on the market. But I feel this is perfect for people who maybe enjoy watching grand designs on TV and think hmm. I wonder how they went about building that. You can see the plans to the houses and basically just go into much more depth than they are able to on the TV program. You are also able to customise the designs, so maybe see how other projects could fit in with your existing ideas. It's got almost 5000 built in objects and it's basically just perfect for the first time CAD user and fans of the show. It doesn't have the advanced features of more expensive programs, but if you're looking to take Grand Designs to the next step like me, this is exactly what you want!